Radio Art Center

Radio Art Center is a bi-weekly podcast recorded by the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and Public Relations Christine Doolittle. Tune in for talks with our curators, the scoop on our newest exhibitions and more.
Radio Art Center airs on KFMG 99.1 FM in Des Moines every other Saturday at 11 am.

The exhibition is a 50-year survey exhibition that considers the themes of action and exploration outside of the studio and how artists engage this theme in various ways, including walking, cartography, land use, endurance, and the consideration of public space.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Crawford sits down with Assistant Curator Jared Ledesma to discuss the new exhibition, The Irrational and the Marvelous.

A little more than a century ago, a group of European artists banded together and formed Dada, an art movement that responded to the trauma of World War I and challenged the concept of fine art. Dada's irrational tactics later paved the way in the 1920s for Surrealism, a movement that encouraged participating artists to look to the subconscious for inspiration. The Irrational and the Marvelous celebrates both Dada and Surrealism, featuring the work of Dada icons Marcel Duchamp and Hannah Höch, and surreal explorations by Roberto Matta and Dorothea Tanning, among others.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Crawford sits down with Chief Preparator Jay Ewart to discuss the installation of the exhibition Drawing in Space.

The site-specific installations that comprise Drawing in Space are not only stunning works of visual art, they are complex installation feats. Ewart takes listeners behind the scenes of the nuts and bolts of how artwork like this becomes a reality at the Art Center.

In this episode of Radio Art Center the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Crawford chats with film director Michael Maglaras as well as Curator Laura Burkhalter.

Maglaras' new film America Rising: The Arts of the Gilded Age will be screened at the Art Center as part of the Artists on the Big Screen + Collection Conversation series on Thursday, September 7.

In the second part of the program, Burkhalter discusses the newly opened exhibition Iowa Artists 2017: Yun Shin. Yun Shin’s subtle works on paper are created using repeated tracings of the same shapes, employing carbon paper, pin points, or oil paint stains. The simple grid-like forms and monotone colors lend the work a sense of minimalism, but the personal nature of her patterns—created by repeatedly copying the calligraphy of her father’s signature or patterns of her mother’s knit work—infuse the drawings with a personal tone amplified by the time-consuming nature of her process. The exhibition is on view in the Blank One Gallery through December 3, 2017.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Senior Curator Alison Ferris to discuss the upcoming exhibition Ruptures.

The unprecedented development of globalized power structures brought about by market economies and a high technology culture has altered socio-political dynamics around the world. Within that, events caused by war, terrorism, political unrest, racism, sexism, immigration, economic crisis, climate change, pollution, epidemics, mental illness, and the tenuous boundaries between the real and the virtual can be described as ruptures. In fact, the word “rupture” is being used frequently now by political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists to describe unexpected and irreversible events that interrupt the continuity of traditional practices.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator Laura Burkhalter to discuss spring exhibitions at the Art Center. Learn more about Studies, Drafts, Sketches on view in the Blank One Gallery, Planetarium on view in the John Brady Print Gallery, and the upcoming Single-channel program on view in the Pamela Bass-Bookey and Harry Bookey Gallery in the Richard Meier building.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator Laura Burkhalter and artist Rachel Sussman to discuss her works in the exhibition Alchemy: Transformations in Gold.

As part of the exhibition Sussman will be creating a site-specific installation called "Sidewalk Kintsukuroi" in the Art Center's lobby.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator Laura Burkhalter to discuss the upcoming exhibition Alchemy: Transformations in Gold.

Alchemy brings together a group of international artists whose work incorporates gold (or another metal disguised as gold). In each case, this precious material not only brings a sense of luxury to the work, but also ushers in connotations of the historic and cultural value various societies have placed on this rare element. As glamorous and sought after as gold may be, it’s capable of suggesting complicated politics and potent symbolism. The works in Alchemy embrace both dark and light readings of this glittering metal.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator of Prints and Drawings Amy N. Worthen to discuss her final print exhibition before her retirement later this year. The exhibition, titled When the Dog Bites, When the Bee Stings, will highlight Amy's "favorite things" from the Art Center's permanent collection.

Amy says, "The permanent collections house thousands of prints, drawings, and photographs representing a wide variety of centuries, nationalities, styles, and media. Whether precious, rare, and major masterpieces, or cheap, mass-produced, humble printed pictures, all are fascinating to me. Although at any given time our visitors might see only 30 or 40 prints and drawings on view in the galleries, I am fortunate to have had this marvelous collection as my domain to explore and think about how the world communicates through pictures. What are my favorites? Why do certain ones continue to speak to me? I might love a supremely wonderful visual idea, the intensity, the courage, the inventiveness, the wit, or the use of technique. I might love a work for its lack of grandeur and quiet rightness. The exhibition texts will tell some of the reasons, and some of my stories."

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Senior Curator Alison Ferris to discuss the upcoming exhibition Vivian Maier: Through a Critical Lens.

This exhibition features 70 photographs (50 black-and-white and 20 color prints) of people encountered on the streets of New York City and Chicago by the late photographer Vivian Maier (1926 – 2009). Maier’s photographs, created between the late 1940s and the early 1980s, were kept completely private by the artist and caused a stir when they were first exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2011. Elusive, solitary, and clearly talented, Vivian Maier is the quintessential “undiscovered” artist of our time.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator of Prints and Drawings Amy N. Worthen to discuss the upcoming print exhibition Heavy, Heavy Hangs Over Thy Head.

This exhibition looks at ways that artists from the 16th century to our time have depicted fire arms, shooters, and the victims of gun violence. The 36 prints, photographs, drawings, and sculpture selected from the Art Center's permanent collections are by Dmitri Baltermants, Jacques Callot, Joseph Cornell, Stefano della Bella, J. N. "Ding" Darling, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Natalia Goncharova, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner, Kerry James Marshall, Irving Norman, José Clemente Orozco, Mitchell Squire, Antonio Tempesta, and others. Whether approaching this subject matter with high seriousness, objectivity, admiration, irony, or with anguish, these works show people using guns in military actions, inter-personal conflicts, murder, assassination, and the hunting of animals.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator Laura Burkhalter to talk about the Art Center's newest exhibition, Arts & Letters. This exhibition considers connections between literature and the visual arts across various times and cultures. Works from the Art Center’s permanent collections, from works on paper from the 16th century to contemporary sculpture, will sit alongside generous loans from the libraries of the Salisbury House and the University of Iowa.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired January 23, 2016, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Amy N. Worthen, curator of prints and drawings, to talk about the new exhibition, GRAAAFICAAA ITAAALIANAAA.

The exhibition explores some of Italy’s contributions to—and its ambivalence about—art on paper from the early to mid-20th-century. Filippo Marinetti’s Les Mots en Liberté Futuristes (1919), a Futurist typography attack on The Past, contrasts with Adolfo de Carolis’ Symbolist woodcuts in Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s wartime meditation Notturno (1922), a work that evokes the highest Renaissance traditions of book design and printing.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Assistant Registrar / Curatorial Assistant Megan Cohen and Social Media Manager Megan Bannister to talk about the upcoming exhibition, Selfie: Self Portraits from the Permanent Collection.

The exhibition, which opens Friday, December 18, will include a number of self portraits from the Art Center's permanent collections and will include an interactive community component. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1IXifKA

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which airs November 28, 2015, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Associate Curator Laura Burkhalter and artist Jessica Teckemeyer to talk about her work in the Art Center's new exhibition, Iowa Artists 2015: Jessica Teckemeyer.

Learn more about the history of the Iowa Artists program and hear the artist speak about her work, which is on view in the John and Mary Pappajohn Gallery in the lower Richard Meier building through February 21, 2016.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired on Saturday, October 3, 2015, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and Public Relations Christine Doolittle sits down with Amy N. Worthen, curator of prints and drawings, to discuss the recently opened exhibition, East and Beyond: Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries.

In celebration of the acquisition of Helen Frankenthaler's breakthrough color woodblock print, East and Beyond, 1973, the Art Center presents an exhibition contextualizing Frankenthaler's print. The exhibition includes four works on paper by Frankenthaler, as well as 23 works on paper and ceramics by American and Japanese artists who were active during the 1950s to 1980s.

On this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired September 5, 2015, Des Moines Art Center Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with artist Laurel Nakadate to talk about the Art Center's major exhibition Laurel Nakadate: Strangers and Relations. The exhibition, which opened to the public on Saturday, September 5, is the first time this body of work has been shown in a museum.

"Strangers and Relations raises any number of questions regarding how we define ourselves and others. Our DNA is the most elemental, individualized facet of our existence. Nakadate takes that unique code and visualizes its potential for communication across digital media—a world as vast and infinite as the genetic code is unimaginably microscopic. Her process, from research to cross-country travel for photos hoots to the finalized photographs, bridges distances both actual and metaphorical. To contact her photo subjects, she reaches into the dark of cyberspace, and the resulting images are elegant, eerie interpretations of the tenuousness of the first meeting of any two strangers." - Laura Burkhalter, Associate Curator at the Des Moines Art Center

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired on May 30, 2015, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator of Prints and Drawings Amy N. Worthen to talk about the Art Center's newest print exhibition, Sea Life: Dürer to Dion.

Sea Life, 2013, a sculpture by contemporary artist Mark Dion, replicates an itinerant bookseller's portable stall, such as those seen along the banks of the Seine. The painted wood case on legs opens up to reveal 236 old and new books on oceanography, marine biology, commerce, travel, boating, and adventure novels written in dozens of languages, as well as postcards and prints, each on having something to do with the sea.

Sea Life: Dürer to Dion will be on display at the Des Moines Art Center June 5 - September 20, 2015 in the John Brady Print Gallery. Learn more about the exhibition here.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired on May 16, 2015, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Senior Curator Gilbert Vicario to talk about the Art Center's newest major exhibition, Fiber: Sculpture 1960 - present.

Curated by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston's Jenelle Porter, Fiber: Sculpture 1960 - present is the first exhibition in more than 40 years to examine the development of abstraction and dimensionality in fiber art from the mid-twentieth century to the present. With 34 artists and 8,000 square feet of gallery space, the exhibition has already been extremely popular among visitors. Learn more about the exhibition here: http://bit.ly/1HfX3iV

The exhibition is on view at the Des Moines Art Center through August 2.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired February 21, 2015, the Des Moines Art Center's Director of Marketing and PR Christine Doolittle sits down with Curator of Prints and Drawings Amy N. Worthen to talk about her new exhibition The Departure of the Argonaut: Prints by Francesco Clemente.

Learn about Italian artist Francesco Clemente and the Art Center's exhibition inspired by the centennial anniversary of World War I. In 1991, the Art Center acquired one of only 50 sets of prints by Clemente on Japanese kozo paper. This is the first time the portfolio has ever been displayed. To learn more about the exhibition, you can read the gallery guide online.

In this episode of Radio Art Center—which aired on March 21, 2015—Director of Marketing and Public Relations Christine Doolittle discusses what's new at the Des Moines Art Center and chats with Associate Curator Laura Burkhalter about one of the Art Center's newest permanent collection exhibitions, Antique Abstraction.

This exhibition comes together just as the abstract art movement is celebrating its 100th birthday. Antique Abstraction will feature work demonstrating the revolutionary formal ideas that led to abstraction, as well as those that embrace complete non-representation. It includes works by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyubov Popova, and Andre Derain, among others, with many on display for the first time in several years.

Want even more abstract art? Attend the March 26 screening of "The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show" and Q&A with Director Michael Maglaras at the Art Center. RSVP here.

In this episode of Radio Art Center, which aired on January 24, Director of Marketing and Public Relations Christine Doolittle discusses what's new at the Des Moines Art Center and discusses the Art Center's newest major exhibition, Field, Road, Cloud: Art and Africa, with Senior Curator Gilbert Vicario.

The exhibition—which will be on view through April 19, 2015—explores the connection between historic and contemporary African art. Field, Road, Cloud: Art and Africa combines never-before-seen pieces from the Art Center's extensive African art collection as well as works from well-known contemporary artists like Nick Cave and Radcliffe Bailey.